Office Building

A Westwood office building occupied by 20th Century Fox Studios and other entertainment industry tenants was sold for $39.5 million to Sun Life Assurance Co. of Canada, brokers said. The financial services company bought 10351 Santa Monica Blvd., also known as Santa Monica Comstock Plaza, from a joint venture of Cambra Realty & Angelo Gordon, brokerage Madison Partners said. The 101,000-square-foot building was completed in 1984 at Santa Monica Boulevard and Comstock Avenue near what is now the Westfield Century City shopping center.

SLOVYANSK, Ukraine - At the epicenter of the pro-Russia rebellion in eastern Ukraine, masked men on Friday raced around in commandeered police cars, blowing through stop lights and flying over speed bumps. Although it was a warm spring day, the streets were nearly empty. Separatists described taking up sniper positions in an unfinished office building, only to find that two floors down their enemies had the same idea. The Ukrainian government declared Friday that it planned to surround and blockade this town, which is completely controlled by the separatists.

A 1970s-era office building in the Westlake neighborhood near downtown Los Angeles that houses a branch of the L.A. Superior Court has sold for $50 million to prominent local real estate investor Jamison Services Inc. Jamison, one of the largest office landlords in Southern California, bought the building at 600 S. Commonwealth Ave. from a family trust managed by Comerica Bank. The 19-story building overlooking Lafayette Park in the Westlake neighborhood was completed in 1971 to house the Los Angeles offices of CNA Financial Corp., a Chicago insurance firm.

Mayor Eric Garcetti wants buildings across Los Angeles to be graded for their seismic safety as part of an ambitious plan to help residents understand the earthquake risks of their office buildings and apartments. Garcetti announced what would be the nation's first seismic safety grading system for buildings during his State of the City address Thursday, when he also for the first time said he supports some type of mandatory retrofitting of older buildings that have a risk of collapse in a major earthquake.

With the lines between our work lives and personal time blurring as new technology unchains us from our desks, the notion of what a desirable office looks like is also changing. Corporate America is moving away from conventional layouts where an employee's status is measured by the amount of space he occupies. Instead, more compact, playful designs are coming into favor. People can do their jobs almost anywhere with their cellphones and laptops, the reasoning goes, so let's make the office a place where people are stimulated by close interaction at their workstations and chance meetings in inviting public spaces such as lounges and coffee bars.

A "major emergency" fire that consumed most of a two-story office building Monday at a ConocoPhillips oil refinery was knocked down and did not affect any other refinery facilities, officials said. The knockdown was declared shortly after 8 a.m., nearly four hours after the fire was reported, according to Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Matt Spence. A total of 166 firefighters battled the blaze, which was limited to an administrative building. "This free-standing structure was located some distance away from the refinery itself," Spence said.

An early spring construction start is expected on a $1.5-million, 16,000-square-foot office building by Phoenix Telesis Development on Oceanside Boulevard in Oceanside. The designer is Turpit & Partners, Architects, San Diego.

L.A. City Councilman Curren Price is pushing for Los Angeles to shut down “problem properties” more quickly after “destitute conditions” were found at a Hoover Street office building converted into apartments. “It took the involvement of three city departments to close this one property,” Price said in a council motion submitted Wednesday. “These city departments need to be able to better communicate and coordinate their efforts to close these properties in a timely manner, because residents should not be living in these substandard conditions.” Price wants several departments, including the Fire Department, the Housing and Community Investment Department and the Department of Building and Safety, to report back on how they could “do a better job of communicating and coordinating efforts to identify and close problem properties.” Escalating rents, scarce housing and continued financial struggles for Los Angeles families have forced more people into such conditions, Price said in a statement.

Dozens of people shared only three showers in the building that Patricia McDowell called home for the last 2 1/2 years. Roaches skittered across the floor, she said, and lights went out and stayed out. In recent months, McDowell said she had to run an extension cord to another room to keep electricity going. But when the Los Angeles Fire Department told McDowell and dozens of other tenants that they had to clear out of the building at 5700 S. Hoover St., citing dangerous conditions, she panicked.

The former home of the Hollywood Citizen News newspaper, now an office building, has been sold for more than $14.5 million to Los Angeles investor SE Edinger. Brentwood Capital Partners sold the two-story building at 1545 Wilcox Ave., said real estate broker Trevor Belden of Industry Partners. Constructed in 1930, the art deco structure designed by architect Francis D. Rutherford was the production headquarters for the Hollywood Citizen News. The newspaper operated under various owners from the 1930s to the early 1970s.

On the main boulevard leading to Los Angeles International Airport, an aging office building will be converted into a much more in-demand product: a hotel. The 12-story Royal Airport Center at 5933 W. Century Blvd. will be turned into a 231-room Residence Inn by Marriott, contractor R.D. Olson Construction said. Olson will perform the $44.5-million makeover for the building's new owner, a limited liability company called Svi Lax. Guest amenities are to include a pool, spa, fire pit, sports court, exercise room, business center and meeting space.

One of the tallest office buildings in downtown Los Angeles has been acquired by a major Hollywood real estate investor, CIM Group, in an unusual portfolio sale that included a regional shopping center in Montclair, a high-rise in Anaheim and a hotel in Bakersfield. The crown jewel of the seven properties acquired by CIM Group is Two California Plaza, a prestigious but troubled skyscraper on Bunker Hill where gleaming office towers erected during the last building boom decades ago are having a tough time attracting tenants.

A 1970s-era office building in the Westlake neighborhood near downtown Los Angeles that houses a branch of the L.A. Superior Court has sold for $50 million to prominent local real estate investor Jamison Services Inc. Jamison, one of the largest office landlords in Southern California, bought the building at 600 S. Commonwealth Ave. from a family trust managed by Comerica Bank. The 19-story building overlooking Lafayette Park in the Westlake neighborhood was completed in 1971 to house the Los Angeles offices of CNA Financial Corp., a Chicago insurance firm.

Burgeoning hotel and nightclub owner SBE will replace venerable entertainment industry chronicler Variety as the top tenant in a well-known Wilshire Boulevard office high-rise in Los Angeles. SBE, founded by Los Angeles night-life impresario Sam Nazarian, has agreed to lease the top two floors of 5900 Wilshire, where the bright red Variety sign atop the build was visible for miles. The Variety sign was removed in November and will be replaced with an SBE sign by spring, landlord Ratkovich Co. said.

When it comes to televised sports, executives root for teams in large markets from opposite coasts to build excitement and grow the audience. Mega Millions, a different kind of sport, scored the same kind of blanket media coverage with its announced winners in Atlanta and California for the near-record $636-million jackpot. The odds of winning lotteries are impossibly high -- about 1 in 259 million for the jackpot in Mega Millions. It is almost more likely that anything else in human experience will happen than winning.